WandaVision: How Viral Adult Swim Short Too Many Cooks Influenced Marvel Series

Fans of WandaVision no doubt picked up on the many instances where the hit Marvel Studios series paid homage to classic sitcoms throughout its first six episodes. The more sinister underbelly of the show and its varied theme songs had their roots in another place which may not surprise internet denizens familiar with other sitcom-influenced media, the viral Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks. In a new interview, Oscar winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez opened up about how they come onto the series and the conversations that they had about developing the songs with Too Many Cooks among the things given to them as reference.

In their write-up on their interview, Variety noted: “By way of example (for the music), Shakman referenced ‘Too Many Cooks,’ the freakish 11 minute Adult Swim short that satirized the opening credits from 1980s and ’90s sitcoms and became a viral sensation in 2014.” Regarding the short, Lopez added: “[It] was one of our favorite musical sketches to come out of the culture in the last several years. We thought, well, anything that’s thinking in that avant garde a direction, we want to be a part of.”

For those that are unfamiliar with the short (which you can watch by clicking here, but be warned it is very much R-Rated) it premiered on October 28, 2014 and aired at 4 AM, the brainchild of Casper Kelly. The short appears to begin as an overly long parody of sitcom opening sequences, stretching from what might be 30 seconds into a minutes long song that continues to add new verses as more and more characters appear on screen.

Too Many Cooks continues to push its own boundaries for the entire run time though, poking fun at police procedurals, cartoons, sci-fi shows, and growing increasingly more and more meta as a mysterious force begins to murder the characters. It’s bizarre, unruly, and frankly genius, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with it that WandaVision was at least slightly influenced by it. The real shocker will be if WandaVision was hiding a serial killer in the back of each episode in plain sight the whole time. Best to rewatch it all just to make sure.

WandaVision can be seen in its entirety on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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